[Marxism] A bad conqueror blames his victims

["John oneill" <John.oneill@xxxxxxxxxx>]

A bad conqueror blames his victims
 
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is president ... Tony
Kinsella argues that partitioning Iraq won't be easy, but apportioning
blame is straightforward
 
Charles Krauthammer began his column this week on a partitioned Iraq
with a quote from Julius Caesar - Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres
(Gaul is divided into three parts) - an assertion that many of Caesar's
contemporaries, and all Asterix readers, recognise as debatable.
 
Erasmus's dictum - In regione caecorum rex est lucus (in the country of
the blind the one-eyed man is king) - might have been more appropriate.
 
As a defender of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Krauthammer performs the
classic conservative intellectual somersault of blaming the victims -
"the US tried to give the Iraqis a republic, but their leaders turned
out to be, tragically, too driven by sectarian sentiment, by an absence
of national identity and by the habits of suspicion and manoeuvre
cultivated during decades in the underground of Saddam's totalitarian
state".
 
The US did its best, made a few mistakes, but the incompetent Iraqis are
responsible for the mess.
 
Krauthammer argues for reluctant recognition of the de-facto ethnic
partition of Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni and Shia regions, admits that
Baghdad remains an unanswered mess, and postulates that such a partition
will lead to stability if not harmony. The US, he tells us, "does not
have a Mr Sykes or a Mr Picot sitting down to a map of Mesopotamia in a
first World War carving exercise".
 
Sykes and Picot did sit down after the First World War to carve up the
Middle Eastern territories of the collapsed Ottoman Empire. Sykes was
the more able for London took the lion's share, leaving Picot's France
with the oil-free Syria and Lebanon.
 
Britain had two main priorities, securing the passage to India by
bolstering its Egyptian protectorate, and securing Arab and Iranian oil
resources to supply its navy.
 
London's invention of Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq,
coupled with its organisation of the Gulf sheikdoms, gave us our modern
map of the troubled region.
 
Iraq was created out of three old Ottoman provinces, the Kurdish north
around Mosul, the Sunni centre around Baghdad, and the Shia south. The
Shia south was radically altered by London separating out Kuwait in
payment for services rendered by its ruling Al-Sabah family. Kuwait
would remain a British protectorate until its independence in 1961.
 
Iraq depended on an authoritarian, Sunni-led government, itself
dependent on foreign backers. Saddam Hussein's US-facilitated rise to
power in the 1960s was a continuation of this tradition of authoritarian
Sunni rule. Washington's unilateral decision to attack Iraq in 2003,
coupled with vapid desires to organise a "flowering of democracy" on the
banks of the Tigris was a pure colonial "carving exercise".
 
It appears that the US pro-consul Paul Bremer decided on
de-Baathification (essentially firing most of Iraq's public servants who
had been members of the ruling Baath Party) and disbanding the Sunni-led
Iraqi army largely by himself.
 
This radical policy proposal was buried in a letter to President Bush,
never debated in Washington, and had entirely foreseeable disastrous
consequences.
 
The US government decided that Iraq should have a new form of
government. It is not clear whether the wanton destruction of civil
society in Iraq was a policy decision, or merely a series of mistakes.
The result was, however, institutionalised sectarian structures.
 
The Shia form a majority of Iraq's population, and Shia parties hold a
majority in the country's new governing structures. Most Shia leaders
did not hone their political skills "during decades in the underground
of Saddam's totalitarian state" but in exile, primarily in Iran.
 
Iraqi Kurdistan is largely autonomous, reasonably democratic and
relatively safe by the standards of today's Iraq. Many Kurds would
welcome full independence, but there are two dangerous snags.
 
The internal one is the definition of borders within Iraq. Kurdistan
needs to include the Kirkuk and Mosul oil fields to be economically
viable, but these cities contain significant Arab Sunni populations, as
well as Turkmen and Christian minorities. Should Kurdistan seek to take
those oil fields and ethnically cleanse their cities, its neighbours
would retaliate.
 
There is a large Kurdish minority in eastern Turkey, and significant
Kurdish populations in Iran and Syria. There have been clashes along the
Turkish-Kurdistan and Iranian-Kurdistan borders. A non-negotiated
Kurdish bid for independence is a recipe for war.
 
Any Shia-Sunni arrangement sticks on Baghdad with its mixed communities,
and the lack of oil resources in Sunni regions. A Shia drive to impose a
solution would lead to full-scale war. Sunni neighbours such as Jordan
and Saudi Arabia would find it all but impossible to avoid being sucked
in.
 
Partition is not an easy option, whether desirable or not. The
responsibility for the bloody chaos that is Iraq lies not in the
shortcomings of its leadership, but in the foolhardy, not to say
ignorant, shortcomings of the US administration.
 
It decided to tear up the WW1 settlement. It never designed a
replacement, and now lacks the power to impose one. The only exit
involves negotiating with Iraq and her neighbours, slowly moving towards
some kind of equitable settlement.
 
Perhaps the best opening quote would have been Colin Powell's 2002 china
shop warning - "you break it, you own it."
 
(c) 2007 The Irish Times
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